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no-droids · 1 year

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Another Rough Day

gif credit @chrishemsworht

Part Twenty of the Rough Day Series

Rating: Explicit

Word Count: 13.7K

Warnings: Angst, violence, canon-typical blood and gore, language, hurt/comfort

A/N: i wanna thank yall for sticking around during my hermit era, in the time ive been gone i am now officially a junior at a university majoring in aerospace and it’s a fuckin nightmare and i hate everything and god help us all literally kill me and I will be posting INCREDIBLY slowly because of that (I’m talkin weeks or months in between updates yall, im sorry I can’t dedicate more time to this but I am going to finish this fic within the next handful of chapters idk maybe 5 or 6 so you shouldn’t have to wait too too long). As a heads up there will be hard angst as we enter the final arc, there will be hurt and it’ll get dark but everything is gonna turn out alright so thanks for sticking with me and continuing to stick with me. im sorry if you dont like it or your expectations were subverted or if this isn’t what you’d hoped it would be after following and waiting around for so long but this was planned a long time ago and it took me a good year or two to recognize that I started writing this fic for me and now I’m going to end it writing for me and I hope yall can respect that

ALSO I asked my best BEST FRIEND in the entire world @cptnbvcks to collaborate with me for this after we both took a very long break from creating and she drew some GORGEOUS artwork for this chapter so it will be posted at the end, everyone please go follow her and say hello

ps brittany girl you’re a fuckin menace i had to use my own two ears and listen to ethan literally say the words “the mandalorian cums, hard” what the fuck was that im actually suing

anyways chapter below the cut lets get serious yall

---

You take two of them down before they even realize they’re being attacked.

Your aim is as swift and steady as if Din were behind your shoulder right now, calmly pointing out which stationary tree to hit next in rapid succession. You’re positioned perfectly at the bottom of the ramp to take full advantage of the ambush, the only thing running through your mind is strategy and the constant calculating of angles and ricochets. The other three troopers are trapped inside the open Crest and you’re right next to a large boulder that you can step behind for cover, but it proves unnecessary as the rumors were apparently true.

They’re… awful.

Not a single blaster is even fired in your direction—you think you see maybe one panicked red shot bounce around in the hull, but that’s it. The troopers fumble for their guns and trip over each other at the unexpected attack—a few scream like children through the modulators, but you’re temporarily deaf to anything besides the screech of your weapon hitting its target and the crumpling of armored bodies.

Later on, if someone were to ask you to describe exactly what happened—who died first, who ran for cover, who cried out for help—you don’t think you’d be able to. You don’t even really feel like a person right now. The entire thing is cold, robotic survival instinct, pure ruthlessness rising in your soul for the first time in your life. It feels sick. Wrong in your bones. Born from preemptive defense in fear of your life, but that doesn’t mean you stop. Not until all of them stop moving.

You empty the entire fucking canister for a handful of stormtroopers, firing plasma and char marks across every square inch of the pristine hull even after the last one drops. Your heart is beating too fast, your finger keeps pulling the trigger multiple times even after the blaster clicks uselessly, completely empty and beeping a warning that it must’ve begun emitting ages ago. Being out of ammo scares you—you suddenly feel vulnerable, even though the very far away logical part of your mind reminds you that they have to all be dead at this point and no physical threat was ever able to graze you.

Regardless, you quickly spin behind the boulder and grab another canister from your belt, giving it a spare check for leaks while the empty one slides and drops to the rocky ground. It’s the first time you’ve ever had to reload this weapon instead of just pointing and shooting, but the mechanics are relatively simple and your brain makes up for your lack of coherent thoughts with lightning fast perception. What's difficult is that your hands are starting to shake now that you’re not aiming, you’re not breathing correctly because you’re not really breathing at all. You can’t tell the difference between the adrenaline-fueled dissociative silence that muffles everything around you or if it really is just that quiet now. No more clatter of armor, no modulated voices or terrified screams. No blasters, no footsteps along the ramp, no birds singing.

You quickly pause to lift your elbow and check the enormous eyes blinking up at you, tiny claws still holding tight to the fabric of your tunic and completely unharmed, and then you force yourself to move. The blaster is held out in front of you while you walk forward and your finger rests on the trigger, begging to be pulled again. It’s suspenseful and terrifying in a different way than before—now it’s less about psyching yourself up for confrontation and more about the fact that any sudden movement could mean your very swift end.

Silence. Silence. You’re numb and raw at the same time, walking up the ramp as your eyes fly everywhere, not even registering the blood or gore, just searching for movement. You don’t know if you feel like a predator or prey, you’re that much more brutal and inhuman because of how fucking terrified you are. You count four stormtroopers in the hull laying crumpled and still on the metal floor, but the one in the far corner only has blood on his shoulder. You quickly swing the blaster around to remedy that, but then—

“P-Please don’t kill me!”

His words remind you of something. Reality, maybe. A world outside yourself and the kid’s survival, the living beings behind the bloody armor your enemies wear.

It’s a miracle your finger stays hovering over the trigger, and you watch him throw the blaster at your feet with a clang and scramble to show you his empty hands. “Please don’t kill me, please don’t kill me—I’m not loyal to the Empire, I don’t want to be here, please, I don’t want to die, I don’t want to die—”

Behind the mask, your expression furrows. Stormtroopers are loyal to the bitter end, what is he saying? They embrace their expendiality, it’s the only thing that makes them any sort of a real threat. Kuiil told you horror stories about them during your childhood, the cloning facilities and the propaganda they’re force fed since infancy. It’s nearly impossible to find one who hasn’t been raised from birth to serve the Empire, no matter how crumbled and trace its remaining authority may be.

No, this is a trap, it has to be. Your expression twists with dread after hearing him speak, readjusting your aim with the blaster and preparing yourself for the years of nightmares that’ll follow—but then he cries out, “Wait!” and then removes his helmet with trembling hands.

You pause, staring down at him in shock.

It’s him, you recognize him immediately. It’s the same face from a hologram puck you bore into your memory, spent multiple days staring at so you’d be able to spot him under any disguise or circumstances. Oshua Ryler. Your quarry, the fifth puck, the one Din was out Maker knows where searching for before this entire mess happened. A stormtrooper? His puck said nothing about the Empire, this doesn’t make any sense. What is he doing here? Stormtroopers don’t have pucks, they don’t have bounties or relatives or loved ones searching for them. They’re brainwashed, replaceable, faceless soldiers in suits of armor and they don’t even have names.

“Please don’t kill me,” he begs again, staring at you with wide eyes even as he cowers. “I have a family, I-I just want to go home, please—”

“Shut up.” You can’t think straight with him crying like that and you’re wasting so much time just standing here trying to process when your brain had to literally shut itself down to even do the things you’ve already done. You have to kill him and escape, you have to—you can’t trust this complication, not with the tiny claws currently digging into your back and reminding you of your purpose, but it was so much easier when he had on a helmet. You hate looking at his face. It’s going to haunt your dreams now, just like the man you stabbed on Corellia.

“Please don’t kill me—please don’t kill me,” he screws his eyes up and breathes over and over instead, and your stomach wrenches with disgust. His posture and expression are so fucking pitiful, you can barely keep your eyes on him through the overwhelming nausea and aversion that climbs up your throat. He’s with the Empire, and they’re looking for the baby. You know what needs to be done. Pull the trigger, just one small movement from you and it’ll be all over. It would be the easiest thing in the world, it would be so easy.

But then instead, you ask, “Why are you a stormtrooper?”

“I’m n-not—I hate the Empire—”

“The Empire is ashes.” You don’t know if you’re yelling or whispering with how much blood is roaring through your ears. “They hold no power anymore. Why are you with them?”

“Because the one thing they have left is money!” The quarry shrills the words at you, ghostly pale to the point of turning green. “Th-They buy troopers now—they opened up a whole new market for the smugglers, there’s a base nearby that’s used for training and…” He stares wide eyed at you and gulps. “C-Conditioning.”

Your brain is already going a trillion lightyears an hour and it doesn’t have the capacity to empathize or understand anything beyond the child’s survival and the relevant details right now. “Were they expecting the baby?”

“W-What?” He squeaks up at you.

“Was the bounty put out on you a trap set by the Empire?” You ask him, lifting your free arm just enough to flash him the tiny child clinging to your side. “He said they’re coming after the baby, so tell me if this was planned from the beginning.”

“Who is ‘he’?” The stormtrooper asks, furrowing his eyebrows and looking around. “What are you talki—”

“Tell me if the bounty on you was a trap to take this baby!” You roar, your blaster shaking as you aim it down at him. Your mind is acutely focused on the tiny claws hanging onto your tunic, the continued safety of the kid and the life or death situation facing him that you were given absolutely no information about. “Now—”

“If it was I didn’t know!” He quickly cries out, pleading with you and clamping his eyes shut in terror under the barrel sight. “I don’t know anything about a b-baby, or a bounty! They just put blasters in our hands and told us to search for a ship and to bring back anyone we find alive, I swear!”

You’re silent for a moment, biting your lip under the mask and caught halfway between discerning and stalling. You could still kill him. You should still kill him, time is ticking down and more troopers could be heading this way any second.

Shit. “Who put the bounty out on you?” You ask sharply. It might not be a completely fair question, but he can’t exactly blame you for not feeling completely fair right now.

“I—I don’t know,” he gasps, clutching his bleeding shoulder. “Could’ve been anyone—my mother, Cyra, o-or my dad, Obediah, or Thia, or Benja, or S—”

“Thia,” you interrupt his rambling, catching the slurred word and repeating it back to him.

“Yes!” Oshua jerks his head up, tears and hope immediately filling his eyes at the sound of her name, “Yes, Thiadura Celi Ryler, that’s my sister!”

Maker, if he’s lying, then he’s fucking brilliant at it. You look towards the cockpit of the ship, biting your lip under the mask. Get to Nevarro, tell Karga and he’ll… something. Din was cut off before he finished. Help? Know what to do? You’re lost, but you have a clear directive and the precious seconds are sliding by. The controls are right up there, two steps to the ladder and less than a minute until you’re rising into the atmosphere.

But then you think back to the terror in Din’s voice. The blistering panic that made him speak faster and with more urgency than you’ve ever heard from him. Get to Nevarro. Tell Karga. Get to Nevarro. Tell Karga.

You look back at the quarry. “How many of you are there?”

“At the base? Around three hundred,” he immediately spills. “Half of us are in the hole right now getting brainwashed, they do it in shifts, but they can be mobilized in a few hours. There were a lot of bodies outside when we were ordered to split off, maybe a third of our squadron, but the rest were still shooting at whatever was—”

“So around a hundred left,” You finish breathlessly, almost wanting him to speak faster and cut to the chase so you can calculate quicker. “How many were dispatched on the search?”

“Uh, there were eight groups of five sent in each major direction,” he informs you, still trembling on the ground. “Told us not to come back until we covered the entire sector.”

Of which, four you’ve already taken care of. In other circumstances, you’d be nauseated at the thought, but right now, it’s just another number to subtract, just more panicked math in Din’s frightening absence. That leaves at least sixty troopers left wherever the base is, minimum, and likely a couple more hours before they’ve combed the sector. If this wasn’t a preconceived trap purposefully set for the kid, then that means reinforcements haven’t arrived yet but likely will soon. And if this is a base meant for training and conditioning, then that also means there’s a chance not all of them will be loyal yet.

You make the decision immediately.

“Okay,” you announce, clicking the blaster’s safety switch and holstering it, sounding lightyears more certain than you feel. “Then you’re going to help me carry out a rescue mission, and I’ll take you back to your sister.”

“You…” He looks uncertain, blinking at your blaster and slowly lowering his hands. “You want to rescue the men?”

Ideally? Sure. Realistically? You don’t say anything in response. Instead, you kick his regulation firearm at your feet further away from the quarry just in case your judgment is flawed, and then turn around and grab one of the bodies behind you.

Your adrenaline is still blaring so fast that you only just barely note the severity of what you’ve just done and what you’re continuing to do. The corpses aren’t real to you right now, they’re inanimate things that you need out of your ship before you can close the doors to it. They are, however, heavy as fuck, but the only other adult here has a wound in his arm from the gun on your hip. Regardless, you have experience with lifting dead weight without a big, strong, capable man to do it for you.

“Help me out here, kid,” you mutter over your shoulder, and in response, you feel his claws dig in and climb up just a little bit until he can peek out in front of you. Thankfully, the burden is suddenly lifted and you can quickly slide the dead troopers down the ramp with ease. It takes hardly any time at all—you just yank and haul and release and all four of them tumble the rest of the way all by themselves.

When you stand back up, Oshua hasn’t moved and he’s looking at you with a pale, queasy expression. Glancing down, you see that your white robe is now stained with streaks and patches of rusty blood. Instead of swallowing back bile at the sight and bolting to the shower to scrub off every last remaining trace, you breeze past it, noting nothing more than a change of color. Dirtying your white, pristine clothing with the consequences of protecting this baby—you’d rather have blood-soaked fabric with an unharmed kid clinging to you than any other combination of those things.

“Can you make it up to the cockpit?” You ask the quarry, kicking his rifle off the ship before closing the ramp and then gesturing up the ladder. Your voice is calm and steady but your hands are beginning to shake again. “I need as much information as possible about the base.” You know that’s where Din is, judging from the wall of blaster screeches that drowned him out through the comm. Logically, you know you could be headed right into a trap, and every instinct inside you wants to find safety, but… you just cannot imagine flying the ship away from this planet without Din onboard. It isn’t fucking happening, you’ve made your choice.

Without waiting for a response, you climb the ladder and plop down in the pilot’s seat of the Crest. While Oshua finds some way to clamber up the steps behind you in bulky stormtrooper armor with one good arm, you hold the kid closer on your lap and begin flight checking. Din will be fucking furious, but the scolding you’ll be sure to get is the least of your worries right now. Following his instructions and going back to Nevarro is just making shit infinitely more dangerous for him, turning what could be a potential rescue mission into an undeniable suicide mission. Even if Karga somehow decides to send a few guild members along to infiltrate the base, it’ll be a war you want to avoid.

Besides. What did you always tell him about running away from him, even when he instructs you to?

It’s just… not really your thing.

---

They’re everywhere.

They crawl like flies out of the base, and for every single body that falls, three more spill from the open doors. Rapid fire plasma beams launch from the end of Din’s blaster, melting white armor with every twitch of his gloved finger. Their aim is terrible, as is to be expected, but the sheer number of them more than makes up for it, as is by design.

Din’s heart pounds with exertion, his breath comes in ragged huffs through the modulator as his helmet identifies and isolates which body is closest to him, which body he needs to bring down next. His blaster is so hot it nearly burns his hand, even through the thick gloves he wears. When he runs out of ammo, he holsters the pistol and swings his rifle from around his shoulder, spinning to catch a handful of troopers behind him in the obliterating blast.

He’s not thinking much. He can’t think, even though your safety and that of his son is currently dangling by a thread. If he focuses on that, he’ll be dead before he can even picture your faces. He just reacts, he maims and kills without a single thought in his mind. Blood splatters, screams and sirens blare as he becomes surrounded by more and more troopers. Din can hear the sound of plasma colliding and ricocheting off his armor; every single one of them is a potential injury he could currently have but might not even be able to feel right now.

His helmet starts beeping rapidly and he turns just enough to see, highlighted in bright red on the screen, two enormous artillery turrets slowly rising up out of the roof of the imperial base. He feels a fierce flash of anger burn in his chest, it’s like a lightning strike to his veins.

Din needs to go.

And yet… if he was another man. If he wasn’t a father, or a husband, if he had no family and no attachments like the creed declared he should, he would go. With just a twitch of his fingers, he could be launching into the sky and retreating as far away from this battlefield as he could reasonably get. He’s never been the type to run from a threat, but this isn’t just a threat. Dozens of troopers are gaining on him, they’re trampling their own dead to get within range. Plasma pings off his shoulder, another one hits his back as they flank from behind. He can feel the heat through the sizzling beskar, he can see them surrounding him on all sides, and the propulsion trigger for his jetpack is right there under his wrist.

Din holds his ground and continues firing, he plants his feet firmly to the dirt with only one thought in his mind.

Run, sweet girl. Run.

---

You type in commands to scan for Din’s signal, quickly locating it through the Crest’s computer onboard. Not far from here, three minutes or less. The ship rumbles to life beneath you, slowly lifting off the rocky ground and rotating in place as it hovers. It’s not on autopilot but you feel like you are, you can barely feel your hands as they move the yoke forward and the Crest takes off in the direction of Din’s blinking frequency.

“Tell me about defenses,” you instruct Oshua, restlessly bouncing your leg while the baby coos.

“Two plasma turrets on top of the base,” the quarry quickly answers. “There’s usually guards stationed around the perimeter, but everyone who’s capable will be outside right now.”

Your mouth twists downwards under the mask. Blasters don’t scare you much from this high up, but Din’s armor doesn’t cover every inch of his body, he’s not completely invincible. Doubt churns in your stomach, but you have to stay focused on one task at a time so you don’t get overwhelmed. The turrets, then. “Are they automatic?”

“Manual,” he corrects with a shake of his head.

“Radar?”

“Old. Only engages above fifty meters.”

You eye your altitude and dip the Crest considerably, beginning to weave through the rocky canyons and dodging crumbling cliffs while you travel. “What about ships?”

“None,” Oshua says, “except for a passenger shuttle used for transport. TIEs are flown in the Vesta sector, this base is remote and used for basic training only.”

“Anything else?” You ask, stomach twisting with the knowledge that barely four questions is all you’ve got. You’re planning to drop into an imperial base to save the man you love and you can’t think of a single other question?

The quarry shrugs, and your heart slams, does somersaults in your chest at the mere notion that you could fucking die here. Today, in two minutes or less, you could die here. The child in your lap looking over the ship’s front panel with a quiet determination in his eyes could die here. Din could already be dead—that signal broadcasts his location to this computer regardless of whether he’s still breathing or not. He could already be gone and you’d be flying the baby right into a trap without knowing any differently.

Whelp, you think while taking a deep breath, some strangely calm existential acceptance beginning to flood your soul. If he isn’t dead, he will be soon if you don’t make it to him on time.

You immediately lift your wrist and speak into the communicator. “Mando?” You have no idea if he can hear you, but you need to try anyway. Your voice is still firm, there’s a strength to it you don’t feel in your chest, but it certainly sounds convincing. “I’m coming to get you. Less than a minute to your location, do everything you can to get outside. If you can’t, I’ll just… uh. Try to figure something else out.”

That’s it. That’s it, improvise until you don’t have to. Even if you’re lacking confidence, you can at least scrounge up some conviction. Your arms gain feeling again while you veer the Crest through the stony terrain, the familiar reverberations under your feet begin to fill your body with a powerful sense of purpose. Your breaths begin to come steady, every falling rock you see through the transparisteel feels like it drops in slow motion, allowing you to evade them easily. It would normally be stupidly dangerous to fly this low with so many unexpected obstacles and hazards narrowly missing the ship, but considering what you’re flying into, a few boulders seems comical.

“Where’s your helmet?” Oshua asks out of nowhere, and for a second, you don’t think you heard him correctly.

But then it strikes you all at once what he’s attempting to imply, and the sheer lunacy of the thought is enough to make you laugh while you clutch the controls. “I’m not a Mandalorian.”

“You wear the armor of one,” he points out… rather fairly, you have to admit. “You cover your face like one. You have a blaster that fires Philithiorium, a rare and expensive gas native to Mandalore’s stratosphere, and you’re a bounty hunter—”

“I’m not a Mandalorian.” Your words are short and cutting, you have a daunting task to focus on and don’t feel like having small talk right now. “I’m not a bounty hunter, either.”

But then again, Karga made you a member of the Guild, didn’t he? He handed you Oshua’s puck and said this one is for you to find, and you are technically part of a Mandalorian clan. All of this seems like it happened without your knowledge. You may be marrying a Mandalorian, you may wear his armor and mother his child and shoot a blaster with his signet branded into it, but war isn’t in your blood. This robe was a costume when you first made it, this armor was a relic that was restored as a hobby. In a sense, it still feels that way. The mask covering your face lended itself to a temporary surge of bravery earlier, but beyond that, the only thing that’s keeping you moving forward now is your family. The man you love that may or may not be alive right now, the baby holding tight to your leg while the ship sways and weaves through the stony landscape.

Your eyes quickly flick down to the child in your lap, both of his three fingered hands clutching onto the stained fabric of your knee without moving a single inch. He’d know, you tell yourself. If his father is gone, he’d already know somehow. Din is still alive, and he’s counting on you.

---

There’s too many for Din to handle.

They swarmed him, overpowered his endless artillery with massive numbers and there’s nothing he can do anymore. The backs of his knees are kicked from behind and he slams down to the ground with a clatter, his sizzling hot blasters are ripped from him, and Din folds his hands calmly behind his back even as one of the stormtroopers barks out, “Binders,” to another one, who disappears quickly in response. In the meantime, a few of them apparently decide to just attempt holding his arms in place, and their measly combined grip is almost enough to make him roll his eyes under the helmet. These imperial soldiers are even more pitiful than they usually are, but his silent resolve to stall to ensure your escape is enough to keep him stationary and compliant for the time being.

Eventually, a few voices call out from beyond the crowd and there’s some movement from the back. Dozens of troopers with their blasters all pointed at him begin to shuffle to make way, careful to keep their barrels aimed at him while a path slowly forms. The crowd of white parts and a stormtrooper with a singular red pauldron on his right shoulder saunters confidently towards Din as he kneels on the ground.

An officer, he assumes. Conveniently missing from the firefight, the scanner inside his helmet would’ve caught the change in color and Din would’ve made sure to kill him first.

“Well now, what do we have here?” Comes his thin metallic voice through the tinny filter. The officer studies him curiously for a few moments, before slowly looking down by his feet, reaching out one cheap, plastic covered foot to gently nudge the body of a dead trooper on the ground with a sigh. “What a shame.”

Coward, he thinks, his lip curling with disgust under the helmet.

“This is an imperial training base,” he turns his attention back to Din to inform him when he doesn’t immediately respond, rather stupidly he might add. “How were you able to find us?”

Silence. The grip on hands held behind his back is even looser now. He just tilts his chin up slightly in defiance, the scanner inside his helmet locating each weapon strapped to the man’s body and highlighting it red. Small text boxes blink into existence under each one with a manufacturer and classification—a BlasTech E-11 rifle, a Merr-Sonn thermal detonator, a Kolvo vibroblade—and Din is severely unimpressed with the quality. The detonator is the only weapon that even catches his eye, and that’s only because the chamber inside that houses the explosive baradium has a release mechanism that’s completely dead. Useless, then. Good to know.

After a long moment of quiet tension where Din refuses to speak and the officer continues to confidently scrutinize him, in some strange sort of silent battle of egos that only one seems to have a genuine interest in, another stormtrooper makes his way to the front, shoving past his fellow soldiers to address the superior in charge.

“Commander, we’ve sent out an alert for an intruder,” he tells him, slightly out of breath from running through the crowd in the lightweight armor. Din wants to roll his eyes, but what he says next makes him snap to immediate attention. “The fleet informed us that Moff Gideon is currently on route.”

Gideon. The last time someone spoke that name, it was a quarry on Coruscant and you just barely managed to stop Din from suffocating the bastard for even saying it aloud before freezing him in carbonite. It would’ve meant half the return on a hunt that lasted nearly a month but he saw red and his hand was crushing his windpipe before he realized what happened. But he’s dead, Din thinks with a clenched jaw and fists tightening behind his back, he watched that TIE fighter explode and slam into the ground, crushing the man inside it. The wreck was unsurvivable, he can’t be alive.

“For what? This Mandalorian?” The trooper in charge scoffs in response, and Din remains completely mute.

“Yes, sir,” the other one confirms. “Orders were to capture him, alive.”

“Hm.” The officer turns his attention back to him, less analyzing and more musing while he tilts his head. “I see,” he eventually says, and he sounds like he’s grinning, before strolling slightly closer as Din stays completely still on his knees. “He must want the beskar. I’m sure it’s worth more than this entire battalion combined.”

All of a sudden, a gloved hand carelessly catches the rim of his helmet and tugs, and Din’s movement is explosive. He launches off the ground, arms easily slipping from the pathetic grip they were being held in and his fist colliding with the side of the officer’s flimsy white helmet, the plastic making a deafening crack against his face.

Multiple hands immediately rush forward to grab him and yank him back down again while the commanding trooper stumbles backwards in shock, and Din amicably drops to his knees and folds his hands behind his back once more like nothing happened at all.

“Binders!” A trooper behind him roars loudly once more, and a few men surrounding him begin trotting away this time.

The officer in red stands a few feet away from him now, grabbing his helmet and twisting it back to its proper position on his head where it was skewed. There’s a shattered hole near his jaw where the material splintered and busted like the cheap piece of banthashit it is, and while he might normally feel pleased with himself for being able to see his skin peeking through, it just fills him with more righteous fury. It’s such a punchable jaw.

After a few awkward moments of silence, the other one clears his throat and continues. “He… has inquired about the location and status of a child that should be accompanying him.”

Din inhales deeply through his nose and grinds his teeth. He wants to snap their necks one by one for even just mentioning his son, but there are just too many, more than even his whistling birds can neutralize. Still, he gave you as much of a head start as physically possible. You should be rising into the atmosphere right now, making the jump into hyperspace towards safety. Karga will know what to do—he’ll protect his family, separate you and the boy so the threat is evenly dispersed instead of collected all in one place, and arm dozens of trained hunters to keep watch over you both individually. It’s the best Din can do, and it’s the only thing keeping his knees planted on the ground and his body completely motionless while they continue speaking.

“We are combing the sector for a ship with as many men as we can afford to lose,” the trooper in red says, but his voice filter is shattered and now sounds like a puny little droid with a broken voice box, “but our numbers are unimpressive. Assistance may be required.”

It’s too late, Din thinks, mouth twitching under the beskar with a satisfied smirk. They’re wasting their time, looking for a ghost. You’re both long gone by now. They’ve got no idea you even exist—

“He also spoke of a girl.”

And then he feels his heart stop in his chest. Every single cell in his body turns to fire, it’s a fucking miracle he doesn’t move a muscle in response. His sweet girl, the one so far removed from the nightmare of the Empire that she made best friends with the orphans of it. How the fuck did he know? He shouldn’t even be breathing, let alone gathering information about you, how did he know?

But then Din thinks back, remembering your makeshift bed on the floor, your panicked eyes and heaving chest as the quarry taunted him with a sick little smile. Who’s this, Mando? She’s just darling, isn’t she? Does Gideon know your crew has a lovely new addition?

“A girl?”

The trooper nods. “Moff Gideon insisted that if the Mandalorian did not have a child with him, then a girl would likely be protecting him instead.”

He’s going to kill them, Din decides. Every single one of these imperial pigs, every single soldier standing right now is a dead fucking man. The blood pumping through his body suddenly turns to acid, deadly black hate poisoning his soul. His heartbeat morphs into a war drum, the armor strapped to his limbs is the barrel of a gun. He’s going to fucking kill them and leave an imperial base full of bodies to greet his old nemesis upon his return, and he’s going to enjoy every single second of it.

Except, then—

“Mando?” The sweetest voice in existence suddenly crackles through the earpiece under his helmet. “I’m coming to get you. Less than a minute to your location, do everything you can to get outside. If you can’t, I’ll just… uh. Figure something else out.”

And, as Din kneels there in surrender, surrounded by a crowd of enemies he thought he destroyed long ago, all the anger—all the fury and defiance and murder surging through his veins—suddenly morphs to fear.

The emotion is so foreign and old to him, it feels like a face he barely recognizes and a name he can’t remember. He’s panicked before. He’s been in situations where a threat has made him blind with rage, he knows what it’s like to look death straight in the eyes and say that he’s busy and to come back another time. This is different. This is ice cold that freezes over beskar.

He can’t speak out loud to warn you—he can’t move his hands to press the button on the back of his helmet and allow him to talk without detection. There’s plasma turrets on the roof of the base, he can see them right now. The helmet’s scanners say they’re manned and engaged, and though he is outside and this is how you retrieved him before whenever he needed a quick escape, he has fifty fucking imperial blasters trained on him and you know absolutely nothing about this threat. You’re flying right into a war zone and if either you or his son dies, he won’t ever be able to forgive himself.

Behind the helmet, his eyes fly to each and every trooper, wondering which blaster will be the one to do it. Which weapon is going to be the one he can’t block in time when you descend, the one that’ll kill him right in front of you. Which turret will be the one to obliterate the Crest with you and his son inside of it.

“Maker, where are those fucking binders—” he hears someone behind him snarl, but the white noise of pure terror roaring through his ears drowns them out. His chest starts heaving against his will, sheer panic begins to blur his vision. For the first time in his life, his armor feels too heavy, his lungs feel like one of these boulders are sitting on them instead of beskar.

All too soon, his helmet starts making a familiar sound that signals quietly in his ear, alerting him of an incoming ship, and the only thing he can physically do is count down the seconds to prepare himself for what is to come.

Ten, nine, eight, seven, six, five, four, three, two…

Like lightning, Din breaks the grip of multiple troopers and surges up, tackling the officer in red to the ground. There’s a clatter as they both slam into the rocky floor, but in the ensuing scuffle, he easily snatches the thermal detonator from his side holster and holds it up for everyone to see, before pressing the red button on the front and hearing it begin to beep rapidly.

---

You’re right on time.

The Crest rises up through the rocky cliffs surrounding the base and you spot the turrets you were warned about. Weapons controls are already engaged and you’re too low to be detected by radar—you fire once, twice, and blast both of them to smithereens from behind before they can even rotate around to target you.

Alarms start wailing but the guns are destroyed. It’s not comforting, though; blasters won’t touch you up here, but that doesn’t mean they can’t fire at Din on the ground. Your eyes dart across the sea of white, looking for a flash of silver anywhere, and then you spot him instantly in the chaos.

For some reason, the troopers in his vicinity all seem to be bolting away from him. Their rifles are down, clutched in their hands while they nearly fall over each other to run away as fast as possible, and your heart soars when you spot his jetpack firing up. Din launches into the sky while another trooper is revealed underneath him, seeming to juggle something in his hands and then throw it into the crowd of retreating soldiers, but the sight of the man you love rising into the air while a flurry of blaster shots from the far edges of the imperial structure follow him gives you the confidence to immediately turn the guns down towards the horde of troopers.

“Which ones are in charge?” You ask Oshua breathlessly, who leans forward and points out the transparisteel.

“Red pauldrons—” he barely has time to say it before you aim and fire at one of the troopers wearing red that was closest to Din, the plasma beam launching from the Crest so powerful and devastating that it outright obliterates the surface he’s laying on. Pieces of shattered armor fly and a smoking crater of rubble is all that’s left behind, but your mind is whirling and you’re already onto someone else wearing red at the edges of the complex, and then two more near the doors, and then another—

To their credit, you think the sixty or so soldiers in training seem to figure out that you’re not aiming into the enormous collection of them. If you were, the damage would be catastrophic and spraying everywhere, but you’re precise and meticulous with your shots, and the only ones who are loyal enough to the cause to hold still and raise their blasters at the incoming threat tend to be the ones you need to mow down anyways. The rest of them scatter in all directions, scrambling over each other to escape and then disappearing into the distant boulders surrounding the base—but you notice that not a single one of them runs back inside the safety of its open doors.

The hull dips with the weight of Din dropping in, and relief floods your soul even as you continue raining hell down on the superiors in charge. Any flash of color you see is a target, your eyes lose focus of everything, your vision blurs and turns monochrome as you just search for red.

“Lift up!” You hear Din’s voice roar from the hull. You can hear his rifle unloading through the open door. “Now! We have to go now!”

You press the button to shut the hull door with Din inside and punch it, rising so fast that the shove of gravity makes it difficult to keep your head up. Through the sudden surge of downward force, you just barely manage to raise your incredibly heavy arm to push the button that pressurizes the Crest and ignites the launch boosters, preparing the vessel for space travel. Outside the transparisteel, the gray sky begins darkening as the atmosphere eventually disappears. The ship’s engines roar, burning so much fuel at once that you’re actually accelerating through the climb, you’re boosting through the gradual ease of gravity as the planet’s curvature and glow becomes softer and softer below you.

As soon as the blackness of space begins to fill the windows, the slight subsiding of force allows you to plug in the coordinates for Nevarro with less difficulty, but you’re still moving, still rising, still escaping. You can’t find it within yourself to slow down, but then something catches your attention.

Claws suddenly dig sharp into your thigh, sharp enough to sting and cause you to wince, and you look down to see that the kid has gone incredibly tense. Deadly tense. Your heart is still pounding even though you’re away from danger, you’ve got Din in the hull, everyone is safe, and yet—

It flickers into existence all at once. One second it’s just space, just the endless depths of nothingness spread out for light years in front of you, and within the blink of an eye it’s suddenly there.

A star destroyer.

Your body freezes in horrified awe, having never seen a ship so fucking big in your entire life. It looks like a massive satellite, the size of an enormous asteroid instantly appearing in your vision and dwarfing the vastness of space around it. All the stars you used to dream about are suddenly blotted out within a fraction of a second, terror so immense seizes your soul that you stop thinking. You stop calculating, you stop being yourself for a split second that lasts an entire lifetime.

Before you can move a single muscle, the computer beeps quickly and lurches the Crest into hyperspace.

---

The stars streak across the transparisteel like so many times before. Utter silence nearly deafens you with how abrupt it is after so much noise, but the peace it used to bring does nothing to quell your fear. Everything is the same as it always was, same bursts of light as you hurdle faster than it towards Nevarro, same quiet, same rumbling hum of the ship. But now, everything has changed.

You hear the quarry next to you suddenly inhale and exhale loudly, and it shocks you a little bit, reminds you that there’s a person next to you and another is on your lap. Other people exist outside of the vision of death that just flickered out of existence just as quickly as it appeared. They’re breathing, Oshua is shakily unbuckling his seatbelt, life is continuing on in the quiet cockpit but you can’t seem to move like he is. You can’t seem to breathe like he is. It’s only when the baby slowly maneuvers himself around on your thigh and blinks up at you, placing a tiny hand on your stomach that you finally feel air enter your lungs.

After a moment, you reach down and click open your seatbelt with trembling fingers, scooping the kid up in your arms and slowly attempting to stand. Everything feels wobbly and dreamlike, you have to brace yourself on the headrest to prevent yourself from falling back into the chair again.

“That was…” Ryler mutters, his voice sounding foggy and distant, “uh. A close one.”

You look over at him, recognizing that he’s speaking but not quite able to understand the words right now. Red catches in your vision, and you blink down at the way he’s clutching his left shoulder, the smear of blood darkening the white armor he’s wearing. You blink a few more times at the sight of it, and though it feels like you normally would be sickened at the wound, somehow shocked out of your state of shock, it does nothing to you. When you look back up at his face, his expression seems strangely grateful, even when it’s screwed up in what you know must be excruciating pain. You did that, a quiet voice whispers in your mind, even though the rest of it seems incredibly blank.

Instead of responding, you stumble a few steps over to the ladder, spinning around and hesitating for a moment. You’re severely lacking in coherent thought, but one thing seems to break through. You’re not sure if you have enough coordination to do this safely right now. However, when there’s movement in your peripheral and you look to see Oshua gently offering his right arm to you, seeming to understand you’d like to use both hands for this, you snap back to your senses just the slightest bit and hug the baby tighter to your chest. Carefully, you begin making the slow climb down the ladder with the kid, still trembling with the aftershocks of adrenaline. Your limbs feel extra heavy, but eventually the floor meets your feet.

Din is standing there when you slowly turn around, armor gleaming and still as a statue, but he has his back to you. His helmet is tilted down at the ground, and when you follow his gaze, you’re met with the sight of the bloodstains of dragged bodies that leave dark red streaks all the way up the ramp.

You feel something this time. It’s… cold. A burning, searing cold that creeps into your skin. Like your heart decides to pump nitrogen through your chest instead of warm blood. You did that.

There’s a sudden urge inside of you to speak, to address him and inform him of your presence, tell him everything is okay, everything worked out, but you can’t find it in yourself to say a single word. You can’t find a single word to say. The kid twists as best he can in your clutch, his ears drag against your chest to greet his father, but for some reason, there’s still a strange sense of fear in your bones. It’s enough to wake you up slightly, it’s enough to tell you it’s not over yet. There’s a terror in your heart that hasn’t left since he first called over the comm and begged you to run, a crippling dread that you thought climaxed after seeing that star destroyer appear, but it’s somehow only increased after laying eyes on him like this.

You watch as his helmet turns, slowly meeting the pauldron on his shoulder, and for some reason, you feel yourself harden. Your feet brace against the metal floor like this is another threat you have to face, you let its unyielding metallic strength transfer up through the souls of your boots to your heart in your chest.

But the second you hear cheap white armor clatter as the quarry steps down the ladder behind you, Din bursts into movement. He suddenly spins and storms up to you in one single step while catching your holstered blaster on your hip. It’s out and aimed in the blink of an eye, and it’s a miracle you remember how to speak before he remembers how to kill.

“Mando—” you warn, just in time for the quarry to land on the floor of the hull and turn around to reveal his face.

Din holds there for a second, his helmet locked on Oshua’s features. His gloved fingers twitch wildly on the trigger of your gun held over your shoulder, like he has to remind himself multiple times not to. You hear Oshua’s armor clack while he likely raises one good arm in surrender, but then Din’s helmet moves a fraction of a millimeter to your face and holds there. He just stares down at you, and the air feels heavy, your body feels heavy, the feather light child in your arms feels heavy.

Slowly, he lowers his arm, lets it fall while he continues looking at you from behind the visor. You look back at him, unblinking, unfeeling, and there’s a few seconds that last an utter eternity where nobody moves. Nobody speaks, nothing happens, but then a soft coo comes from your arms before you can finally break eye contact, knowing there are still some things that need to be done.

You eventually turn around and lift your chin to address Oshua.

“You have to go into carbonite,” you inform him quietly. Your voice sounds strange, like it’s coming from outside of yourself. “We’re taking you to Nevarro, and then you’ll be transported to your home planet. When they unfreeze you, your sister will be there to collect you.”

He looks uncertain, one hand still raised while the other hangs uselessly at his side, and you don’t blame him.

But you also don’t feel like saying anymore, not unless he decides he doesn’t want to go in willingly. Normally you might’ve tried to empathize, offer him further reassurance beyond just a couple short sentences, but you don’t. Speaking feels difficult, thinking feels difficult. You’re still in survival mode, not active but reactive. There’s also no reason for you to lie to him about this, and you can see him glance at Din standing silently behind you, who hasn’t moved a muscle.

He eventually nods and you walk him over to the chamber without another word, watch him turn to face you as he backs into the opening while you reach up towards the control panel.

But then there’s a moment. One where you hesitate slightly, one where your vision flashes back to the sight of those bloodstains on the floor, and that burning cold fills you again, so cold it feels completely numb.

“I’m… sorry,” you whisper quietly to him, though your voice sounds so empty. There’s so much emotion that should be there but isn’t, so much regret and pain that should break through but can’t. “I’m sorry I… killed your friends.”

Later, you’ll think about how you felt absolutely nothing saying it. Your heart doesn’t constrict with remorse at the mere words leaving your mouth, guilt doesn’t flood into your soul, pain doesn’t wrack through your bones. You could’ve been saying anything at all and nobody would be able to tell the difference.

He blinks at you, flicking his eyes between yours for a second or two, but then you press the proper button and watch the gas quickly freeze him where he stands. He’ll be conscious the entire time, but Karga will send him to the correct location and you have no doubt that this elemental purgatory is leagues better than where he just escaped from. It’s a benefit being the last quarry to be retrieved—he’ll only have to spend a few days trapped in here before being reunited with his family.

When that’s done and Oshua is a complete statue in front of you, bulky white armor now colored a dull metallic gray and frozen in time, you will yourself to finally turn around to face the enormous mountain of a presence behind you. The baby gently reaches out for him, but Din doesn’t move from where he’s stood. Your blaster is still clutched tightly in his hand, and he isn’t looking at you.

Slowly, you walk over and stop directly in front of him in the middle of the hull, blinking at him while the helmet subtly moves to lock onto your face. The kid begins wiggling in your arms, making soft impatient noises while you both stand in complete silence across from each other.

After a few moments, you hear him flick your blaster’s safety on by his side and then toss it carelessly to the ground. It skids along the floor, light enough to be mostly quiet. Gloves reach out as he carefully takes the kid from you and settles him in the crook of one arm, and then he looks you up and down, still not saying anything.

Your eyes follow his movement, watching his arm slowly reaching out to you, and you think he’s going to cup your jaw, or brush your hair back. Give you some sort of physical reassurance since he hasn’t spoken a single word of it.

Instead, Din suddenly grabs the armor clinging to your chest and starts ripping it off you with one hand. It clangs to the floor so loudly in the silence of hyperspace, the kid’s ears twitch and flutter with each shattering bang. You hold still while he does it, you barely respond except the unavoidable movement your body experiences as the pauldron is yanked from your shoulder and thrown against the ground. The ammo belt is tugged over your head and hurled away, the thigh braces are snatched from your legs and they clang to the floor, and the pearly, opalescent fabric revealed underneath is stained in dead man’s blood, rusty and in such great quantities that it shows up as brown instead of red.

“Are you hurt?”

He sounds… dead. So monotonic that you can’t possibly gauge his emotional state. He doesn’t move. His fists don’t clench, he says every single word like it means the same exact thing as the last. If nothing at all was a person who could speak, they’d use his tone of voice.

“No,” you eventually whisper.

The helmet nods once, and then he spins around and walks away without anything else. Without saying anything, without touching you, or double checking you for injuries in case you were lying. You stand utterly still while Din climbs the ladder with the kid cradled in one arm, and you don’t even flinch when the door to the cockpit slides shut behind him. You have no idea how long you stand there in the splitting silence afterwards, numb and unmoving.

You feel… nothing. Absolutely nothing.

The hard defenses you strapped to yourself today to reconcile the things you had to do are still high and strong, guarding your soul even if he stripped away your physical armor. Self preservation is still animating your body, and your facial expression barely changes. Your first thought, as soon as you remember that you can have one, is that there are things that still need to be done. Tasks to complete.

Alone, you shower the lingering traces of blood off your body, the normally clear and refreshing water running a sickly, toxic brown. Alone, your stomach rolls and suddenly decides to empty itself of the very little that was in it as the scalding drops rain down over you—mostly liquid and bile that easily rinses down the drain. The water is too warm, it beats down on you like blazing hot sand pelting your skin in the desert. You feel like you did those first few months with Din, where the silence was suffocating, where you’d only interact with the baby if he was on a hunt or if you could tell he didn’t know how to calm him when he was fussy. If you were in hyperspace, you usually spent time by yourself in the hull while he lived in the cockpit, and if he decided he needed to be in the hull for whatever reason, then you’d trade places with him. It was… isolating. Lonely by yourself. The quiet used to haunt you before it became your cherished friend, but now it’s a betrayer, a ghost that whispers memories and nightmares in your ears.

When you finally finish rinsing the blood from your skin and get dressed, you see the sheets that used to make up your bed now have fried holes in them from your charred plasma marks, the inside of the hull is covered in them and the trails of dried blood where you dragged the bodies down the ramp. Your armor is still strewn about the hull, the kid’s hovering shield lays dead in the corner. Everything you meticulously cleaned and organized and collected and created, now the scene of a bloodbath. One committed by your hand, your blaster still laying uselessly on the floor forever linked to this atrocity.

You spare a glance towards the ladder, but you don’t want to come face to face with Din yet. You already knew he’d be furious, but… you had hoped that he’d at least…

What? At least what? Comfort you? Coddle you after you deliberately ignored his instructions? What exactly, in the past year or so of learning Din’s inner workings and intricacies, would ever give you the impression that he’d come give you a big hug after you purposefully defied him? You flew the kid directly into an imperial base after being told to protect him, you ignored every order he gave to you in the moments he thought would be his last, and though you did it to save his life, you have a feeling that Din has never valued his life even a fraction of what you do.

The misery stabs at your soul, but your mind is finally beginning to process things logically. He’s alive, the kid is alive, the quarry is secure, and you’re all onboard the safety of this ship hurtling through hyperspace where nobody, not even the Empire, can touch you. You weighed the consequences before making your decision, you did what you had to do. If he wants to be mad, then he can fucking well be mad and you’ll find some way to comfort yourself. At least he’s here being mad, at least he’s alive and safe and breathing and mad, and your rare act of disobedience is to thank for that.

Somewhere in the back of your mind, you realize it’s probably easier than it should be to reconcile the punishment. Right now, you welcome the exclusion, the negativity and sorrow beating itself into your soul. Four innocent people died today on this ship, gunned down under your blaster while they panicked and ran for cover. You keep hearing their screams.

So you start to clean up the hull, needing another task to focus your thoughts on. You work to erase every inch of the evidence of your deeds, make it disappear like the pool of blood Din once cleaned up while you were sleeping and never acknowledged again. You only allow the bloodstains to fuck with your head for a single moment, and then you swallow back the nausea until you’re a blank slate again and sink to your knees with a rag in your hand. After that, your vision stops focusing and it just becomes red contrasting against gunmetal gray, and you work tirelessly to get rid of all remaining traces of it.

Then you start on the blaster marks, you need them gone. After a few informed attempts at mixing cleaning chemicals, you find one concoction that allows you to wipe them away like they’re nothing more than dirt that got tracked in. The Crest’s oxygen recycling system works overdrive to constantly purify the air so you don’t get high or pass out, but your nose still stings. It’s fine, it’s sterile, it burns a bit but it smells sharp and metallic and keeps you hyper focused on the task at hand.

After that’s done, you pick up the charred blankets and ball them up to throw into the trash vent. You don’t feel anything as you do it. You don’t think about how long it took you to collect these over months and months of being stuck on this ship, how comfortable they were when everything else was industrial and rigid, how many nights you spent with Din curled up in their softness while he breathed easy and warm. Sheets are just luxuries, they can afford to be lost.

Next, you gather your armor and wipe it down with the rag, put it away along with your blaster. The stained robe goes in the trash, along with the sheets and the blood soaked cloth you used to clean everything. They’re all ruined, you’ll never be able to make them right again.

The hull is sparkling clean when you decide to take another shower. Nothing on you is dirty except your hands, but you feel filthy. Wrong, cold, numb, cold, stained, cold.

After scrubbing your skin raw under the water and changing clothes again, since you don’t really know what to do with yourself anymore, you slowly climb the ladder to the cockpit, keeping perfectly silent. When you reach the upper platform and come face to face with the closed door, you can just barely hear Din’s whispered voice speaking quietly to the baby beyond it.

You raise your hand for a moment, hovering your knuckles over the metal, but then it eventually falls. Instead, you look over and spot the corner, the same corner Din bunched himself into when he snapped at you for even suggesting going on a hunt with him, blew up at you for the mere notion of something happening like what happened today. You back yourself into it in defeat and slowly sink down on the floor, resting your head against the metal and hugging your knees to your chest since you don’t have a tiny baby to take their place.

You can’t sleep. You don’t even try, it’s pointless. The concept feels foreign the longer you sit here by yourself. You don’t hear Din or the baby anymore, but you feel… so fucking awful that it’s fitting that you don’t knock or go looking. You don’t want to hold that sweet child with hands that were covered in blood just a few hours ago. You killed more people than you can count on your fingers today, and of the ones who had done nothing wrong… They screamed like younglings, ducked for cover and were able to fire off one single useless shot in the mayhem before you closed their eyes forever and left their bodies to rot in armor that wasn’t ever their choice to wear.

You didn’t know they were kidnapped and smuggled and forced into that situation. You couldn’t have known, but that isn’t the point. In this case, knowing doesn’t make one bit of difference.

You also can’t face Din yet, not like this. You don’t want him to see you cowering, shattered with guilt over the decisions you made under pressure. How will you ever get him to forgive you for not listening to him when you can’t even forgive yourself for the result of your choices? Din is a hardened man who grew up in blasterfire and bloodshed, just because you love him doesn’t mean he’s going to magically become someone he isn’t. You’re here letting guilt sink sharp claws into your chest over four dead men when he had a good fifty or more corpses scattered on the battlefield around him. You decided to wear that armor, you decided to fly into an imperial base with the kid on your lap, and this is now your penance. You’ll accept it with your back straight and your chin held high.

Figuratively, of course. Physically, you’re smaller than you’ve ever been. Crumpled up into a ball, taking up as little space as possible, curling up as tight as you can like an animal protecting all your vulnerable parts during a brutal attack.

So, since he isn’t here to comfort you himself, you just try to think about what he would tell you. A long time ago, what would he tell you?

Din would tell you… that you killed someone. Multiple people, this time. He’d also tell you that it doesn’t matter what he tells you, what you could have reasonably foreseen or what you should have done. The end result won’t change. You own this now. You’ll carry their deaths with you.

You take a few deep breaths, self-soothing with the undeniable truth that would be murmured matter of factly from his quiet voice. He wouldn’t argue with you. He wouldn’t deny the decisions you made or the consequences of them. It happened, and at the end of the day, you either learn how to handle that, or you don’t.

And, for the four you did shoot, you were responsible for freeing ten times that amount. You’re responsible for reuniting Oshua Ryler with his family, even if your place in yours is momentarily shunned. You’d rather be out here alone than in there with the kid, wondering where his dad is or if he’s even still alive. You rescued Din and now he gets to be here to shut this door on you, hold his son, and whisper calm reassurances to him. If you listen really hard and imagine, you can pretend they’re for you, too.

That’s it. Focus on them both, alive and well together. Focus on the bodies wearing white armor that were moving, the ones that were bolting away from the imperial training base as fast as they could, free from the torture of imprisonment and conditioning.

Finally, you close your eyes and slip into unconsciousness. It’s not a testament to your exhaustion, but rather just how long you’ve been left to sit here by yourself. Hours, maybe. Time is strange in hyperspace.

You dream of a faceless man ringing bells.

---

When you wake up, a small baby has been placed in your arms, and you’re being dragged into a strong, secure beskar hold on the floor.

“Din,” you suddenly lift your head as soon as you’re conscious and nearly bonk it into solid metal, apologies rising in your throat before you even remember where you are. You did what needed to be done to keep your family alive and together and you’d do it a thousand times again if necessary, but that doesn’t mean you won’t apologize anyways. After the deeds you’ve committed today, regret feels as natural on your lips as speaking your own name. “I’m sorry, I’m so sorry, I know you’re mad at me but I—”

“Shh,” he whispers, running his gloves through your hair. He’s still wearing his helmet, he hasn’t taken anything off yet. “Don’t say anything. Just… stay here, stay right here with me.”

“I tried to save you,” you croak, tears instantly flooding your eyes. You did save him. You saved him and the baby and yourself but you’re so physically and emotionally exhausted that all you can recall is your intent. “I tried. Wasn’t gonna leave you there by yourself. I tried to be brave, like you—y-you wouldn’t have left without me.”

His arms tighten around you, cradling you in such a strong embrace that you burrow into him, you find a place for your head on the hard metal strapped to him and bury yourself there, wishing that you had shovels of dirt being piled on you to justify the death you still feel staining your soul. Your heart is starting to pound now that you’re remembering, your body is starting to shake with tremors of shock now that you’re aware of your own skin again.

“I was so sc-scared, Din, I didn’t—didn’t know what was happening,” you lament through watery eyes, gasping it out in hopes that it’ll relieve the slightest bit of the gut wrenching guilt just mercilessly crushing you. It caught you before you could protect yourself against it, that armor you built around yourself isn’t on when you first wake up. “I-I didn’t want to kill them, but they were already on the ship and y-you said—you said they were coming after the kid s-so I had to, I had to—”

“Stop,” Din whispers, voice so quiet that you can barely hear him.

“I-I cleaned up the blood,” you turn your face against the cold beskar to let all the positives you listed for yourself before scrape across your throat. They don’t sound comforting anymore, they just sound like excuses. “It’s gone, it’s like it never happened, everything is okay now, I got the quarry, I protected the baby, I saved a bunch of people, you’re both safe—”

“Stop,” he chokes out. The modulator cuts off before you can hear his next breath, but you feel it shudder under your body. “St-Stop it, please.”

Your eyes clench shut so tightly you feel like the streaking stars outside are behind them, tears drop down against his pauldron and you press your face tighter to it like it’s a wound, like the pressure will somehow ease the bleeding.

“Listen to me,” he says very quietly, and you instantly brace yourself. The walls you just let down shoot right back up, your body physically tightens in preparation for another pain, another trauma, another scar you’ll carry, and you stop shaking. You stop breathing, even when his hand comes up to ease your face away from his armor.

“You,” he whispers, holding your chin so you’re staring right at him, and your eyes flick fearfully in between his behind the visor, “are a sweet girl.” Din’s leather thumb brushes along your skin, dragging over the tears below your puffy eyes. “Not,” his voice catches, “a Mandalorian.”

Your heart goes cold. Again, everything turns numb. It doesn’t matter that you already said this yourself out loud earlier today. It doesn’t matter that you acknowledged this fact, verbally insisted it more than once to hammer home the truth and felt some sense of comfort in it. For some reason, hearing the words from his mouth is a fucking knife to your chest.

“I taught you how to fight, how to shoot a blaster,” he murmurs, thumb catching every single tear that continues to fall as he speaks. “I taught you everything I know, everything that’s been taught to me. I taught you how to defend yourself, how to protect yourself when you’re in danger. I gave you your blaster, I gave you my armor, I gave you everything I could give you to keep you safe. And when I thought you were ready, I let you loose on Sanctuary II. Do you know why I did that?” The helmet tips forward the slightest bit at the question, probing deep into the most shattered part of your heart. “After all those months of fighting, and shooting, and training, do you know why I told you to run?”

You blink silently at him, a shaky breath quaking through you, and your expression wants to crumple under the reprimand. You’re so fragile right now, taking hit after hit after hit to the softest parts inside you, and you want to just give up. Let the guilt and remorse take you, let it wash you away. But then, instead…

There’s a flicker of something inside you. Something strong, endlessly strong, and it makes you want to revolt against what he’s saying. It replaces the hurt and fear and desperation for comfort with a strange sense of insurgence, like it did earlier when you were hiding behind a boulder, cowering and trembling and not wanting to die. You’re filled with a quiet urge to defend yourself in the face of this, stand up for yourself and refuse to be beaten down any longer.

“Because you needed to know how to escape danger,” he answers himself when you don’t. “You needed to know how to disappear, how to outsmart any pursuer and find safety, even the trained ones. Especially the trained ones. Anything else was meant to be your last resort. Not your choice. Not something you chose.”

“I couldn’t leave you,” you admit to him quietly, voice shaky and tears still coming even as you try to speak up for yourself. The regret you carry has nothing to do with this, and you decide right now that you won’t feel bad for saving him. Your hurt comes from the meaningless things, the ones without any need whatsoever, not the necessary ones, and you tried. You repeated his words to yourself over and over again, told yourself to run, told yourself to get to Nevarro, and it wasn’t going to happen. “I couldn’t do it. It wasn’t a choice.”

“It was,” he tells you. He says it softly, whispers it like it’s the gentlest thing in the world, but the power and inherent distance of the armor strapped to his body finds its way into the words. “And it was the wrong one.”

“What was I supposed to do?” You ask, just a hint of that rebellion swimming to the surface now, rising out of the waves of self doubt, the one that feels like a spine growing in your back, an energy coursing through your veins that makes your heart start to beat faster. Din’s hand slowly drops from your cheek but you don’t care. “Was I supposed to run away and just let you die?”

“Yes.” It’s quick and blunt and completely emotionless. Delivered like a punch to the vulnerable parts of yourself he taught you how to protect, and the utter silence following this single word is comparable to the physical pain you learned to defend against. It jabs hard against everything good and sweet and tender inside of you, and you’re left speechless even as he continues impassively. “That’s exactly what you were supposed to do.”

It takes a second, but then that unfamiliar feeling suddenly surges up, breaches with the power of an entire ocean. Your voices may be nothing more than whispers in the dark, you may be clinging to each other, holding each other with the softest, gentlest love in your hearts, but the strength of your conviction on this would rip metal apart.

“No.” The word holds the might of your entire being, and it stands alone and defiant in the face of everything you fear, everything that threatens you, him, and this child. Never. You’ll die before that happens. “I love you, and there’s nothing in this galaxy that would ever make me do that. Not fear, not danger, not the Empire, nothing. Not even you.”

Din stares at you. His visor reflects your hardened expression back to you, the force in your soul and the purpose in your eyes, and you don’t even realize the gravity of what you just said because like your love for him, gravity is a constant. It’s a fundamental truth cemented into the rules that govern your actions and it stays true no matter where you are, no matter what terror you face, or how scared you become. You have him, you have this little boy in your arms, and if that’s all you have, then you have everything.

After an eternity of this, of feeling his eyes pierce deep into you from behind the helmet while you refuse to wither under his stare, you watch him slowly turn and look down, landing on the sleepy child tucked between you both. He holds there for a long time, before finally whispering, so quiet that the modulator barely picks it up, “It was the wrong choice.”

You stay quiet. It happened. What’s done is done, you can’t change the past. He can scold and reprimand you about this as much as he wants, but you did the right thing and that decision is the only reason he’s even here to be able to do so. This exhausted child was reunited with his father because of your choices, and this exhausted father was reunited with his child. You won’t argue anymore, but it’s a certitude that lives deep in your heart now, builds a home there right alongside the both of them. Din eventually looks up, his eyes find yours again behind the visor, and his hand rises once more to gently cup your jaw.

“I… thought I’d enjoy seeing you in my armor,” Din finally whispers. It’s not what you expected, but his voice sounds… weak. Broken. “You wore mine once before, and it was…” He brushes his thumb along your cheek, and then his head shakes slightly, pushing the thought away. “It wasn’t real. It didn’t fit. It dwarfed you, it made you look out of place, it made everything soft and innocent about you stand out. I liked it because it wasn’t real.”

“Was it… really that bad?” You whisper back, partially to ease the tension just slightly but quickly breaking eye contact with him when you realize it doesn’t land correctly, it just sounds self conscious and sad. You try to find that conviction again, that strength and assurance that propped you up so sturdily before, but… Not a Mandalorian, he’d said. Of course not. Of course not.

“It wasn’t the armor.” Din gently tugs up on your face so that you look at him again. “It was you covered in blood. It was you purposefully putting yourself in danger. You killed multiple armed soldiers of the Empire, you dragged their bodies off the ship. And then you flew into an imperial base, where you killed the officers, too. You…” He shakes his head slowly at you while speaking, and although you can’t see his face, you don’t need to in order to hear the horror in his voice. “You… collected a quarry… in the middle of a massacre, sweet girl.”

Not a Mandalorian.

“You don’t chase down bounties,” he tells you. “You don’t fly into war zones. You don’t kill imperials, you don’t collect quarries, you don’t sacrifice yourself, or our son, to save me. You said you tried to be brave… like me.” His fingers tighten against your cheek, he dips his helmet to make sure you understand. “I’ll never ask you to be brave. I’ll ask you to survive.”

“I’m… sorry,” you finally whisper, and his arm drops from your cheek to join the other in wrapping around you and holding tight. They hug you and squeeze, encasing you and the baby in a beskar shield and staying there for a long time. Long enough for you to tuck your head back into its proper place under his helmet, long enough to start to feel okay with the silence again. It brutalized you the last time you were surrounded by it, it made you feel alone and desolate and barren inside. You greet it warily now, settling into it for an unknown amount of time until it’s forgiven once more.

After a while, Din quietly breaks it.

“How many?” He murmurs to you. You already know exactly what he’s asking, there's no more clarification necessary on his behalf.

You slowly close your eyes and think back to the smoldering craters, the blood soaked ramp, the fear in Oshua Ryler’s eyes as he begged you not to kill him.

“That didn’t deserve it?” You ask, clenching your eyes tighter at the memory. “Four.”

And maybe, maybe six or eight months ago, you would’ve begged for some guidance on how to reconcile that. Hell, maybe a few hours ago, you could’ve used his arms around you exactly like this, his low voice repeating the same things he’s already told you before, over and over again, if only for some semblance of stability when everything feels turbulent and uncertain. You’ll never be able to change it, though. This belongs to you now.

This time, all Din says is, “I’m sorry, too.”

And that covers everything.

The silence envelops you both again, but… there’s something else. Something that still sits deep in your worries, an image that isn’t a scar of what’s happened but a dread of what’s to come. You need to tell him. You don’t feel like saying it, you don’t want to speak it aloud for fear of bringing it into existence, but you need to tell him.

“Din?” You breathe out, and he makes a soft noise in his throat while cuddling you on the floor. “I saw…,” you whisper, every word sitting tight and reluctant in your throat. “Right when we made the jump, I was looking through the window and I-I saw…”

“A star destroyer.” He says it like… like it’s the worst thing in the world and also completely expected at the same time. He says it like he already knew, yet can’t even imagine. You lean every bit of your weight against him since you can’t hold him in return, squish him as best you can against the small corner and curl up even tighter in his arms for comfort.

He takes a deep breath, a shuddery sound you don’t think you’ve ever heard him make before. It holds untold anxiety, unsaid conflict, uncertain action, an unknown path forward.

“I don’t know what to do,” Din eventually whispers to himself, to you, to the baby in your arms. His voice is barely a breath through the modulator, his fingers digging into your skin with how many emotions he’s repressing. “What do I do?”

He sounds so distressed that you automatically feel your soul find the floor—instantly, you become steady and calm and you locate all that rationality that kept you going today. All your worries still twist deep down, all the guilt and the turmoil wrestles with your soft, easy nature until you can only find bits and pieces of it in the most vulnerable places inside you, but if he’s struggling this terribly, then the least you can do is offer some good, true, unwavering faith in times of uncertainty. You’re in hyperspace, everything worked out, and it’s going to stay that way for right now. If he doesn’t know how to talk about it yet, then you trust him enough to wait for him.

“It’ll be okay,” you tell him with a newfound confidence and purpose, carefully easing the baby into one arm so that the other can find its way to the other side of his helmet and pull him closer. Din tucks his head and allows you to brush your lips against the metal, whisper the words soft and steady to him. “We’ll figure it out together.”

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